I used to have a habit: when a project said the mainnet was live, I would automatically assume it meant it was ready to start observing. Later, I found that many projects look the same whether their mainnet is live or not. Only a few addresses are running on-chain, and the transaction volume is even worse than a typical “shitcoin” pool. After Dusk’s mainnet had been running for more than eight months, I asked myself one question: setting aside all the technical narrative—cryptography innovation, compliance, architecture—how many people are actually doing real things on Dusk today?
My answer isn’t very optimistic.
DuskEVM’s testnet has just launched, and the mainnet DApp ecosystem is still in its early stages. Active addresses are about 19,000. For an institutional RWA-focused chain, this number might be acceptable—institutions don’t need millions of users; a few major customers are enough. But the problem is that NPEX’s €300 million in assets are still at the stage of being prepared for on-chain deployment, not yet on-chain and generating transactions. The Dusk team is also aware of this issue. Their 2026 strategy is very clear: technical and hardware upgrades, cutting block time from 15 seconds to 6 seconds and tripling throughput. Ecosystem coordination—linking liquidity providers and compliant trading counterparties. Compliance deepening—meeting different institutional regulatory needs with tailored requirements. All three in tandem. But there’s a deep gulf between planning and execution. I’ve seen too many projects that look great in the roadmap stage, and then get stuck once people actually start using them. Technology can be built by engineers; an ecosystem can only be built by real users running it. The real test for Dusk isn’t whether the Boreas protocol can be upgraded and deployed on the testnet, and it isn’t whether block time can be cut to 6 seconds. The real test has only one thing: by the end of 2026, how many real assets have actually been tokenized on NPEX and completed tokenization on Dusk, producing real transactions on the Dusk chain? If the answer is “many,” then Dusk has crossed the hurdle from a technical project to commercial infrastructure. If the answer is “few,” or still “in plans,” then no matter how beautiful the architecture or how sexy the cryptography is, it’s only a love letter to regulators written by engineers.
Data doesn’t feel like it lies.
I’m just waiting quarter over quarter for the network fee growth. If fees rise, it means real settlement is happening. If it stalls, then this is another narrative trade.
#dusk $DUSK @Dusk
My answer isn’t very optimistic.
DuskEVM’s testnet has just launched, and the mainnet DApp ecosystem is still in its early stages. Active addresses are about 19,000. For an institutional RWA-focused chain, this number might be acceptable—institutions don’t need millions of users; a few major customers are enough. But the problem is that NPEX’s €300 million in assets are still at the stage of being prepared for on-chain deployment, not yet on-chain and generating transactions. The Dusk team is also aware of this issue. Their 2026 strategy is very clear: technical and hardware upgrades, cutting block time from 15 seconds to 6 seconds and tripling throughput. Ecosystem coordination—linking liquidity providers and compliant trading counterparties. Compliance deepening—meeting different institutional regulatory needs with tailored requirements. All three in tandem. But there’s a deep gulf between planning and execution. I’ve seen too many projects that look great in the roadmap stage, and then get stuck once people actually start using them. Technology can be built by engineers; an ecosystem can only be built by real users running it. The real test for Dusk isn’t whether the Boreas protocol can be upgraded and deployed on the testnet, and it isn’t whether block time can be cut to 6 seconds. The real test has only one thing: by the end of 2026, how many real assets have actually been tokenized on NPEX and completed tokenization on Dusk, producing real transactions on the Dusk chain? If the answer is “many,” then Dusk has crossed the hurdle from a technical project to commercial infrastructure. If the answer is “few,” or still “in plans,” then no matter how beautiful the architecture or how sexy the cryptography is, it’s only a love letter to regulators written by engineers.
Data doesn’t feel like it lies.
I’m just waiting quarter over quarter for the network fee growth. If fees rise, it means real settlement is happening. If it stalls, then this is another narrative trade.
#dusk $DUSK @Dusk